Страница:
looked a lot like him in all the Audry's-like places we had been in. Harold
pulled his one kitchen chair away from the small table and set it out, then
indicated that one of us should take it and another should take his
recliner. It was beyond clear that he never got guests of any kind-at least
the type of guests he wanted to sit down with. I think at that point we were
all so stunned by what he had said, we really weren't reacting well. I know
I wasn't. I have no real idea what I thought I was going to find when we got
to the "treasure," but a guy waiting to be rescued sure wasn't it. And a guy
who had used the map to bring his rescuers would have never occurred to me.
Only Glenda took his offer of the recliner and settled into it with a deep
sigh. The guy looked at her, worried.
"You were captured and taken last night, were you not?"
"I was," she said.
Harold looked sincerely upset. "I'm so sorry. You're so lucky you
survived it."
"We saw a room full of people who didn't," Aahz said.
The poor guy looked like he might just faint away right there. He was
wringing his hands, shaking his head, and pacing.
"It's all my fault, you know. All my fault."
"Okay," Aahz said, trying to calm the guy a little. "You want to
explain to us what's going on?"
"Actually start from the beginning," I said, leaning against the
kitchen counter.
From where I stood I could see out the two-story-tall windows that
flanked one side of the big room. The valley below was in complete shadow,
but the sun still covered the mountains and streamed in through the window
onto the grass. If this was a prison, it was the nicest jail cell I had seen
in a long time.
Harold nodded. "I'm sorry, I am just so shocked you are here, that the
map worked."
"The beginning," Aahz reminded him.
"Please?" Tanda said. "Right now you are looking at four of the most
confused people you have ever seen."
"Okay," Harold said, his head nodding like it was on a spring. He
glanced at the window and then took a deep breath. "I've only got a
half-hour until sunset and this is a long story. I might have to continue it
in the morning."
"No problem," Aahz said, clearly doing his green-scaled best to calm
the guy. "Just start and we'll go from there."
Again Harold did the nodding routine, his head going up and down so
hard I was sure he was going to have a neck ache. "First off, you're
standing in what centuries ago used to be called Count Bovine's Castle."
Okay, I have to say that I wasn't the one who started the snickering.
Tanda was, with her snort. Then Aahz started shaking his head, clearly
trying to contain himself, and I just couldn't keep the laugh inside
anymore. Thank heavens the guy was so lost in trying to tell us the story he
didn't notice.
"For as long as history recorded," Harold said, gathering speed on his
tale, "Bovine's type and our people lived in an uneasy balance. They fed off
of us; we killed them when we discovered them. Everything was in balance.
The legends go that Count Bovine, a very long-lived and smart vampire, found
this area and took it over. He enslaved the people of Donner and built this
castle."
Harold waved his arms in both directions to make sure, I guess, that we
knew he meant the castle we were sitting in.
"Then Count Bovine led his people in a revolt against my people, using
the power that came from this castle. Over a period of a hundred years he
swept out over everything and was on the verge of wiping my kind from the
face of this planet."
The guy glanced at the window. The sun was on the tops of the
mountains. Sunset was close.
Harold went on. "Of course, during that time Bovine's people also wiped
out almost all other living creatures here as well with their blood thirsty
ways. Day in and day out, they just couldn't get enough blood to satisfy
themselves."
It suddenly dawned on me, that except for horses, we hadn't seen any
other creatures since we had gotten here. No dogs or wild animals. Nothing
but cows, horses, and people.
"Okay, a quick question," I said. Harold nodded with a glance at the
window. "You're saying that Bovine's people were not cows at that point, but
were people like you, just vampires?"
"Yes," Harold said. "In fact, it is rumored that vampires originally
came from our species, but that fact is lost in time, if true."
"It's that way on other dimensions," Aahz said, "so it is more than
likely it was that way here as well."
Harold nodded. "I had heard that as well."
"So what happened?" I asked.
"Count Bovine, who was not a stupid individual, understood that
something had to be changed or his people would wipe out my people, who were
his people's only remaining food source."
"Makes sense," Tanda said. "You lose your food, you die as well."
"Exactly," Harold said. "So he struck a deal with the few remaining of
my people to take his people away for all but the nights of the full moon,
if my people would serve his kind during that time as food."
"And your people agreed?" Glenda asked, sounding as stunned as I was
feeling.
"I don't think my ancestors had a choice," Harold said. "Using the
magik of this area, Count Bovine put a spell on the rest of my people. Then,
using an even more powerful magik spell, he changed his people to cows."
"So while they were cows," Aahz asked, "why didn't your people just
kill them all? Seems like it would have been easy."
"It would have been," Harold said, "if not for the magik that keeps us
from doing just that, and keeps us from advancing. The magik allows us to do
nothing but prepare for the round-up. Month in and month out, for centuries
now, we have done nothing else." Harold just shook his head and went on.
"Bovine's people became contented cows, careful how they treated us during
the full-moon nights when they regained their normal form and had parties.
We became the feed animals, content to do nothing but prepare constantly to
serve our cow masters. It was survival for us, but not much of one."
Harold glanced once more out the window. The sun was just a minute from
leaving the top of the distant mountaintop. "Quickly, follow me," he said,
moving toward the bathroom area of his living quarters.
"What happens now?" Tanda asked.
"I become a cow for the night, the vampires roam the castle feeding and
killing like the history says happened, and if you don't hide in a magically
protected area, they will find you."
I was right behind him when Harold led us into his bathroom, opened a
cabinet on the wall, touched a place inside the cabinet, and stepped back as
a wall behind a toilet started moving inwards.
"This is the most magically protected room in all the castle," Harold
said. "Stay in there until I open the door. Under no circumstances come out.
Understand?"
"We understand," Aahz said.
I was the first one through the door, with Tanda and Glenda right
behind me. Aahz took a moment longer, talking about something with Harold
for a moment, then he joined us.
Behind the wall the space had been carved out of solid stone that was
streaked in gold. It was warm and lit by the golden glow of the gold from
the walls. The entire room was filled with old books, scrolls, desks,
chairs, and more antiques than I had ever seen in one place. We were all
inside when the guy slid the wall panel closed behind us without another
word.
"Not even a wave goodnight," Tanda said.
Glenda moved inside and right to an antique couch against one wall.
"If you don't mind," she said, lying down and closing her eyes. "I
think I need a nap."
"Good idea," Aahz said. Then he looked at me and held up a
gold-threaded rope that he had gotten somewhere. He put his finger to his
mouth to indicate that we should all be quiet. Then he moved over and took
an old blanket from another antique.
"I got a blanket here to cover you," Aahz said to Glenda. "Keep you
warm for the night."
"Thanks," Glenda murmured, clearly almost asleep.
Aahz moved over to her, motioning for Tanda and me to follow silently.
I had no idea what he wanted me to do. Aahz put the blanket over her,
wrapping the rope over her as well. Smooth move. She would never know it was
there.
He pointed that I should pull the end of the rope that had dropped down
against the wall under the couch.
I got on my knees and did just that, then gave the end to him as Aahz
pretended to tuck the blanket around her. With a quick knot he tied the rope
and stepped back.
Tanda and I both stepped back with him. I didn't know how one loop
would hold someone like Glenda, or why she even needed to be held. But
clearly Aahz had known something I hadn't, which was normal.
Glenda started thrashing, back and forth, back and forth, clearly
trying to get out of the bind, yet the golden rope never seemed to tighten
or strain in holding her. Then her eyes opened as if seeing a terror I sure
didn't want to see.
"What's happening?" I whispered.
Aahz motioned for me to be silent as Glenda's mouth opened into a
scream that never really came. Her back arched her up against the blanket
and rope, and she held that pose for a good thirty seconds.
It was the longest thirty seconds I had experienced. I couldn't take my
eyes off of her and the look of pure terror on her face. Then whatever she
was going through was over. She slumped back, closed her eyes, and began to
snore.
Aahz motioned that we should move away through the books and old papers
and scrolls.
"Okay, what just happened there?" Tanda asked a half-second before I
asked the same question.
"Harold gave me the rope to save her from becoming a vampire," Aahz
said. "It seems that those left alive last night were the ones they liked."
"So that was why Glenda's body wasn't in that morgue with the others,"
I said.
"Exactly," Aahz said. "They were trying to turn her, have her join
them."
I glanced back at where Glenda was snoring. "So she's not going to be a
vampire now?"
Aahz shrugged. "We'll keep the rope on her until morning just to make
sure."
"How about for two days?" Tananda asked.
Aahz laughed and said, "Maybe."
As far as I was concerned, we could keep the rope on her for the next
month. When it came to Glenda, my motto was better safe than sorry.
Spending the night trapped in the middle of a culture's entire history,
afraid that at any moment I might get taken and have my blood sucked, is an
experience I would not wish on my worst enemy. The room we were trapped in
was huge, with a high, domed ceiling and row after row of shelves full of
old books alternating with piles of ancient furniture. Unlike Aahz and
Tanda, I was not the scrounge-through-old-things kind of person. Old stuff
was dusty and usually boring, as far as I was concerned. I thumbed through a
few books and blew the dust off some old scrolls that looked like cookbooks.
I decided I didn't want to know what they were trying to tell me about how
to cook, so I wandered over to another aisle, found an antique couch tucked
off to one side of a pile of furniture, managed to get most of the dust off
of it, and lay down.
Tanda and Aahz were reading, whispering to each other about their
finds, clearly excited about what they were seeing. I was beyond being
excited about anything at this point. I was just tired. Yet for some strange
reason (namely vampire cows and fear of getting my blood drained and ending
up naked on a metal table in a morgue), I couldn't get to sleep. Instead I
lay there, finally turning onto my back and staring at the high ceiling.
Maybe an hour into the attempt at sleep, it finally dawned on me what I
was looking at every time I opened my eyes. On the smooth, stone ceiling
surface someone had painted something a long, long time ago. Now, in the
weird light from the glowing walls, and all the dust of the years, it was
faded and almost invisible. But it was still there.
And the more I lay on my back staring at it, the more I realized that
what I was seeing was the most important thing in the room as far as we were
concerned. It was a map of the entire castle, only it wasn't a map of the
current castle, but the layout of Count Bovine's castle.
The more I studied the drawing, the more I could see in the faint
outlines. I found Harold's living area, which at one point must have been
Bovine's royal suite.
The room we were now in was shown as a private library. And the skull
room was there as well, labeled as "royal storage." But what was really
interesting was the passageway that led from this room down into the
mountain, away from the Royal Suite, down to a point that seemed to show an
energy focal point of some sort in a large room. The energy point was drawn
on the very center of the dome, which I also found interesting.
After another hour I was sure I had the important areas of the map
pretty well memorized, including some escape routes from the castle I didn't
think any vampire cow would know about.
I stood and moved over to where Aahz and Tanda were sitting at desks
pouring over books. Glenda was still asleep on her couch, the golden rope
tied around her.
"Have a good nap?" Aahz asked.
"A productive one," I said.
He looked at me with his normal puzzled frown and then pointed at the
book he had open in front of him.
"Says here that this area around the castle is the magik focal area of
the entire dimension. Before Count Bovine took it over, it was a spa area
where demons from all the dimensions nearby came to soak up the concentrated
magik forces and become rejuvenated."
"Powerful stuff," I said.
"More than anything I've seen before," Aahz said.
Tanda pointed at what she had been reading. "This book says that the
war between the vampires and the normal folks lasted for over two hundred
years and killed almost everything. This was one of the last books put in
here before the exodus."
"Exodus?" I asked.
Aahz nodded. "It seems, from what we can gather, that when the
compromise was reached to save both sides, Count Bovine and his people left
this area, this castle, putting a shield up around it to keep everyone out
of the magik."
"It seems the count didn't trust his own people with this kind of
power," Tanda said.
"So what became of this count?" I asked.
Aahz shrugged. "Maybe Harold will tell us in the morning."
"Well, before that I've got something to show you."
I had them follow me back to my couch.
"I really don't feel like a nap," Aahz said.
"Just trust me," I said, pointing to a pile of furniture ten paces
away. "Pull that other couch over here."
He shook his head, but did as I suggested.
"Now both of you lie on that couch," I said, dropping onto the one I
had been on for hours earlier. "And lie on your backs."
Neither of them moved, and both looked annoyed. "What, can't trust me
for five seconds?" I asked, smiling up at them.
Aahz snorted and then lay down, scooting over enough to give Tanda a
little room as well.
I pointed upward. "What do you see?"
"A dark ceiling and a lot of dust," Tanda said.
"I see myself wasting my time," Aahz said. "There's a lot of
information here that we need to-"
Silence filled the old library. After a few long seconds I said,
"Interesting, isn't it?"
"What?" Tanda demanded. "Would you stop playing games and just tell me
what is going on?"
To me the map was now as clear as if it were printed on a white piece
of parchment. "It's a drawing," I said, pointing to the clearest lines to
Tanda's right.
"It's a map," Aahz said.
"Exactly," I said. "And if you study it long enough, you can see where
we are."
"Oh, my heavens," Tanda said to herself, now clearly seeing the drawing
of the castle.
"After a few minutes of looking at it, the lines become clearer," I
said. "Take a look to the right of the room we're in."
I didn't say anything else, giving them both time to study what I had
been looking at for hours. Then finally Aahz said, "It looks like there's a
corridor there."
"Where?" Tanda demanded.
"Off the room shown as a private library," I said. "On the opposite
side from the royal suite."
"And it leads downward," Aahz said.
"To this area's power," I said. "Do you have any idea what standing in
the middle of that kind of energy focal point would feel like?"
Both Tanda and Aahz looked at me.
"Like nothing you could ever imagine, apprentice," Aahz said.
"True," Tanda said, going back to staring at the drawings on the
ceiling, "but Skeeve might be the only one who can go down there."
"I know," Aahz said, also going back to studying the roof over his
head.
"Exactly what do you mean by that?" I asked, not liking the idea that I
might have to take that old corridor alone into the middle of the mountain.
Aahz sighed. "I've lost my powers; Tanda is an assassin, not a
magician, and we can't trust Glenda. You're it, apprentice. If one of us has
to go down there, it has to be you."
I stared at the roof, following the ancient corridor down into the
center of the mountain to a place of unimaginable power. For the moment, the
idea of getting my blood sucked by a vampire cow didn't seem so bad.
"Things are looking up."
MICHELANGELO
The rest of the night just crawled past. Aahz and Tanda stayed on the
couches with me for the longest time, studying the map and trying to figure
out how we were going to get out of here. I noticed that, once Aahz
discovered there was no golden cow, and that the map had been a sham to get
someone to save Harold, he became very interested in just leaving. I
supposed that was better late then never.
Aahz was sitting at one of the desks while Tanda and I stood beside him
when the wall opened up and Harold stepped in. Through the opening I could
see daylight flooding into the main area beyond the bathroom. It seemed we
had survived another full-moon night in the land of cow vampires.
Harold stepped in and glanced at where Glenda was still sleeping. She
hadn't moved at all during the night.
"Did she try to get away?" Harold asked.
"Only when the sun went down, and only for a few seconds," Aahz said.
"The rope held her."
"Then she's safe," Harold said.
"What did the rope do?" I asked, not really clear on the concept that a
simple rope like that could hold even a child, let alone a person who wanted
to be a vampire.
"Basically, the magik in the rope stopped her from changing," Harold
said. "And leaving it on her all night cleaned her system of any chance of
it ever happening. Check her neck if you want to make sure."
I moved over to Glenda. Drool had run out of her mouth and formed a wet
spot on the blanket. And she was snoring lightly. I put a finger on her
temple and eased her head over so I could see the vampire bite marks on her
neck. Where her skin had been red and inflamed, it had now returned to
normal. Only a few faint marks that looked more like freckles were left of
the infection.
"Amazing," I said.
Aahz had moved up behind me. "It sure is."
"Leave the rope on her for a while longer and let her sleep," Harold
said. "It will do her good, give her body time to replace the blood drained
from it."
I glanced at Glenda again. For a moment I almost felt sorry for her.
Almost. Then I remembered she had stranded me in this world with no thought
of ever coming back for me, and the feeling-sorry emotion left quickly.
"So how did you survive the night?" Tanda asked.
Harold just shrugged. "The same way I have survived every full-moon
night for more years than I want to think about. I turned into a cow, ate
grass, and slept standing up."
"Oh," Tanda said. "You going to explain that to us in the rest of your
story?"
Harold laughed. "It's a part of it." Then he looked around. "This is a
pretty amazing room, isn't it?"
"It is," Aahz said. "We learned some interesting history from some of
these books."
I noticed that Aahz didn't say anything about the ceiling map, and I
sure wasn't going to either. I wondered if Harold even knew about it.
"Good," Harold said. "That will give you some more background on what
happened with me, and how we got like this. Shall we go back out into the
sunlight?"
"What about her?" I asked, motioning toward the sleeping Glenda.
Harold shrugged. "She won't wake up as long as the rope is on her.
She'll be fine right there."
We followed him out into the main room. It felt great to see light
again. Spending the night in a dusty room worrying about what might happen
at any moment wasn't my ideal evening.
"Anyone like something to eat?" he asked, moving into the kitchen area.
We stood around the counter, watching him.
"Anything but carrot juice," Aahz said, smiling at me.
"Not funny," I said.
Harold looked at both of us and shrugged, clearly having no idea what
we were talking about. "I can make you a horse-steak sandwich, a cucumber
sandwich, or a salad with fresh tomatoes. And I've got either orange juice
or water to drink."
"Wow, you eat better than the rest of your people," Tanda said.
"I do?" he asked, surprised. "It's been so long since I've been out of
these rooms, I wouldn't know."
"A lot better," I said, "but at the moment I'd just like a glass of
water."
Aahz and Tanda agreed and as he got the water Aahz prompted him to
start his story again. "You got up to the point where your people and Count
Bovine's people had come to an agreement, his people were changed to cows
for most of the month, and this place was sealed off. What changed?"
"Actually," Harold said, "I changed it."
"Why?" Aahz asked, a fraction of a second before I could.
"Because I thought I knew better, knew what was best for my people,
knew how to change things back to a better world."
"Better back up and tell us how that kind of thinking got started,"
Tanda said.
Harold nodded. "I met a dimension traveler named Leila. I was running
this little restaurant and bar just down the road from here when Leila
walked in. We got talking, she told me about the big world outside of this
dimension, and then offered to let me be her apprentice. She said I had
great magical potential."
I glanced at Aahz, who ignored me. Not once had Aahz ever said I had
great magical potential, and I certainly wasn't going to ask him if I did.
He'd just say no and laugh. Mostly laugh.
"Leila took me dimension-hopping with her, showed me hundreds of
different places, taught me some basics of magik, then got killed by an
assassin."
I could tell from the look in Harold's eyes that even though that had
been some time ago, he still missed her. And might even have been in love
with her.
"So after she was killed I got a D-Hopper and came back here. The magik
block over this old castle was pretty basic, intended to just keep Count
Bovine and my people out. But I had been trained in some magik, so I got in,
knocking the block down.
"A little knowledge can be dangerous," Aahz said, glancing at me.
It was my turn to ignore him.
"It sure can be," Harold said. "I sat up house right here and found the
room you stayed in last night, and started learning about what had happened
to my people. And the more I read, the more convinced I became to try to
save my people and wipe out the vampires once and for all."
"In other words," Tanda said, "you started the war again."
Harold nodded at Tanda's blunt statement. "Basically, I did. Yes."
"So what went wrong?" Aahz asked.
"Count Bovine came back," Harold said.
"What?" I said. "How could he? He'd have to be thousands and thousands
of years old."
"He is," Harold said.
Aahz stared at me. "When are you going to get it through your head that
powerful vampires, like powerful magicians, live a very long time?"
"Okay, okay," I said. "Go on with your story."
"I actually didn't know that Count Bovine could be alive either,"
Harold said. "Since I was free from the magical spell that kept the cows
safe, I started gathering up help. One by one, I gathered a gang, broke the
spell over them, and started planning. When there were about fifty of us,
all trained and on horseback, we set about rounding up cows and killing
them."
No one said a word, so Harold went on. "As we went, on our army got
bigger and bigger, and more and more cows died. Every skull of every cow we
brought back here to make us stronger. It was a heady time."
Harold looked like an old man, thinking back to his party days.
"When did Count Bovine show up?"
"Oh, about four months into our little war. He and five of his most
powerful vampires walked in here one night and killed every one of my men
without so much as a fight."
"Bet you thought you had it shielded, didn't you?" Aahz said.
"I did," Harold said. "I was so confident of the shielding that I
didn't even have guards posted."
"Wouldn't have done any good," Aahz said. Tanda nodded. I didn't have a
clue why he said that, but Harold seemed to agree as well.
"Needless to say, Count Bovine was angry. He imprisoned me up here, and
put a spell on me so that every month, when he and his people are dining on
my people, I'm a cow eating grass."
"How long ago was that?" I asked.
"I don't know exactly," Harold said. "No real reason to keep track. At
least thirty years, maybe more."
"And Bovine and his people have been killing your people ever since?"
Aahz asked, looking puzzled.
"Actually, no," Harold said. "That just started a few years back, when
Count Bovine was killed and his second-in-command, Ubald, took over."
"Ubald's not one for keeping things in balance, is he?" Tanda asked.
"Not worried about it at all," Harold said. "He told me that there were
enough of my kind around for his people to party for centuries."
"At least he didn't undo the cow spell," I said.
"Neither he nor Count Bovine could," Harold said. "Ubald keeps trying,
though. He's using the cow skulls in the other room there to funnel energy
into breaking it."
"Makes sense," Aahz said. "A spell that major, in place for that long,
would be almost impossible to remove. But not completely impossible."
"He's got time," Harold said.
"So how did the map come about?" I asked.
"When Count Bovine was still alive, and had me locked up here, none of
them lived anywhere near here. One day, this cartographer showed up. I
wanted him to help me escape and he said he couldn't."
"He can't," Tanda said.
"Why?" I asked.
"He told me that, as long as he didn't involve himself in any activity
in any dimension," Harold said, "he was free to use his magik to move
anywhere he wanted, map anything he wanted, including through the magik that
Count Bovine had put up to hold me here in this castle."
"I'm puzzled," Aahz said, "How did you get him to lie that there was a
cow here who gave gold milk and draw a treasure map to it?"
"It never says anything about a cow giving gold milk," Harold said,
laughing. "I'm the cow the map leads to, and I was willing to give anyone a
lot of gold if they found me."
"Makes sense to me," Tanda said, laughing.
I was enjoying the different emotions playing over my mentor's face. We
had deciphered the map, found the cow, and were entitled to the gold. That
made Aahz's mouth water, I could tell. But, at the same time, getting the
gold out of here, with all our blood still inside our bodies, was going to
be another matter.
Harold noticed Aahz's face. "You're a Pervert, right?"
"Pervect," Aahz said, showing all his teeth.
He hated being called a Pervert, and often was, since that was the
reputation of the demons from his dimension.
"Sorry," Harold said. "But you love money and gold, don't you?"
Now it was Tanda's and my turn to laugh. Aahz just gave us both a dirty
look and then said, "Of course."
"You are welcome to all the treasure-gold if you want- you can carry
from here," Harold said. "There's tons of the stuff in the back. The rocks
of this mountain are full of it. All you have to do is help me escape."
I knew there wasn't a sunbeam's chance on Vortex #6 that Aahz would
turn down that offer. But I didn't really mind. I sort of liked Harold. And
besides, I'd lost a mentor once myself, and we apprentices needed to stick
together.
"You know of a way to escape from here?" Tanda asked Harold, staring at
how Aahz's eyes had glazed over at just the idea of a lot of gold.
"If I did, would I still be here?" he said, his voice sad.
Aahz looked at me and I shrugged. "Why not?"
Aahz looked at Tanda. Tanda sighed. "Sure. As you've been saying all
along, we've come this far."
"Great," Aahz said. "We'll help you."
I knew for a fact that Aahz didn't have a clue how we were going to
help Harold escape, but the promise sure cheered up our host.
After another hour of talking with Harold to make sure we hadn't missed
anything important, I knew enough about this Ubald vampire guy to make me
want another shot of carrot juice. The guy was just plain mean, almost as
old as Count Bovine had been, and not at all happy with the situation as it
stood.
On top of that, he liked to party, and party hard. By the time the sun
was ready to come up on the last morning of the full moon, Harold said,
Ubald and his group were stumbling idiots. Still very dangerous, but
stumbling, and it often took the men with the golden shovels days to round
up all the cattle from the different rooms of the castle and take them back
to their private pastures.
The idea of coming into a huge bedroom suite to find two cows standing
on a rumpled bed was too much for me. Tonight was that night, the most
dangerous night of the full moon according to Harold. I could hardly wait.
Finally Aahz decided we had talked enough and we all headed back into
the library area. Aahz wanted to have Harold show us the books about the
spells put over this castle, the spells put on everyone by Count Bovine, and
what Harold knew of the magik energy surrounding this castle.
But first we had to wake up Glenda. Snoring, drooling Glenda. As far as
I was concerned, she could just stay right there, sleeping for the next
hundred years, or until she died of hunger in her sleep, whichever came
first.
But it seemed that Harold and Aahz had other ideas for her which they
were not sharing with me.
"Are you confident she's cured?" I asked Harold as we stood staring at
her.
"Completely," Harold said. "The magik rope there does the trick."
"Well, just to be sure," I said, "can we put the rope around her again
tonight, before the sun sets?"
Aahz laughed. "Trust me, she'll have the rope on tonight. You can count
on it."
I stared at him as he moved to her and untied the knot in the golden
rope, then pulled it free, wrapping it in his hand.
After what Glenda had done to us, I figured it would have served her
right to become a cow for most of every month for the rest of her life. She
was already a self-centered bloodsucker; why shouldn't she have the entire
cow package?
After Aahz pulled the rope off of her, she awoke, groaned and somehow
managed to sit up, her face pale and her eyes glazed. "What happened?"
"You slept through the night just fine," Aahz said.
"Snoring like a horse," Tanda said.
I wanted to ask her how she knew horses snored, but figured this wasn't
the time to push too much into her personal life.
Glenda's hand went to her neck, where there was now no sign of the
vampire bites. I could tell that she was surprised when she touched her neck
and it didn't hurt. Surprised and confused. Then she noticed the gold laced
rope Aahz was holding. For a moment she looked into his eyes. Then she
asked, "Was I going to turn?"
"You were," Harold said. "It was why Ubald and his vampire friends let
you live."
"And the rope is what I think it is?" Glenda asked, not taking her eyes
from Aahz.
Aahz held it up. "Just to be safe, you're going to wear it tonight as
well. I promised my apprentice there for his peace of mind."
She stared at the rope for a moment, then nodded. "I suppose I should
thank you."
"Just help us all get out of here and we can call it even," Aahz said.
"I'll do what I can," she said, "but first, can I have a glass of
water?"
Harold laughed. "You are cured. I'll get it for you."
I had no idea why Harold thought that Glenda getting a glass of water
meant she was cured. Seemed like a somewhat silly sign to me. Or maybe
vampires were only thirsty for blood?
Harold headed out the panel toward his kitchen area. When he was safely
gone Glenda looked up at Aahz, the anger clear and at full force in her
eyes.
"Why didn't you just stake me when you had the chance?"
I was stunned by the question. And her anger at Aahz for not killing
her.
"I thought about it," Aahz said.
He pointed to a sharp stake on top of an antique dresser beside the
couch she was sitting on. I hadn't noticed it before. Again I was stunned.
Aahz went on.
"I figure you can be of help to all of us, something you haven't done
much of up to now."
"You know I'm going to have to wear that rope for the rest of my life,"
she said, "on every full moon, every time I hop dimensions, every night?"
"I know," Aahz said, his voice cold and low and sounding just about as
mean as I had ever heard him sound. "And if you don't help us, I'm going to
free you into the countryside here, in this dimension, without the rope.
You'll be a cow for most of the rest of your life."
I stared at him, seeing a side of my mentor I didn't often see. It
seemed that, as always, he had known more than he was telling me, and that
helping her had just been a ruse to keep her with us and under his control.
He tucked the rope into his pouch and crossed his arms.
"And if you want the rope to stay alive tonight, you're going to work
with us and not pull any of your tricks. Understand?"
Glenda glared at him, then slowly nodded. "I understand." Well, I
didn't, but I didn't want anyone trying to explain it to me with all the
anger flowing around at the moment.
"Go with the flow."
M. TWAIN
Sometimes in grand adventures, there are times when just nothing
happens. The rest of the third day of the full-moon cycle was one of those
times.
Aahz, Tanda, Harold, and Glenda spent the entire day poring over books
and old scrolls, trying to find answers on how to get out. I mostly sat and
listened, falling asleep every few minutes until my head bobbed enough to
wake me up enough to listen until I fell asleep again.
And over and over that pattern went. My neck was sore by the time the
day was over.
About thirty minutes before the sun set Aahz had Glenda lie down on a
couch, and then he tied the gold-laced magikal rope around her. She fell
asleep instantly. That rope was the best sleep aid I had ever seen. Aahz
should take it back with us to Possiltum to make money. On bad nights, I bet
the king would pay a ransom for it.
If it had been up to me, I'd have sent Glenda out into the hallway to
be a cow, eating grass and being followed around by a guy in a white hat
with a shovel. But it wasn't up to me, so Aahz put her to sleep.
About twenty minutes before the sun set Harold shut us into the library
again and went to his grass to become a cow for the night.
I slept off and on all night. Aahz and Tanda did as well, reading while
they were awake. By morning, when Harold opened the door and let in a few
wonderful rays of sunlight from the living area, I was well-rested and bored
to tears.
Aahz untied Glenda to wake her up, pouched the rope, and we all went
out into the kitchen area to have Harold cook us horse steaks covered in
tomatoes. He called it his celebration breakfast. He said he had it every
month after the last full moon night.
I had to admit, it was surprisingly good. After breakfast the talk
turned to escape, which, after the boring day and the fear of cow vampires
all night, was the most interesting topic I could imagine.
Aahz took charge of the discussion and ticked off our options. "First
chance we have is to lower the dimension-hopping screen. If we could do that
for even an instant, we'd be out of here."
"I've never run into a screen like it," Tanda said, "even in all my
years of being an assassin. It's more solid than a rock."
"More than likely coming from the energy in the mountain," Aahz said.
I thought about the map on the ceiling, and how Aahz hadn't mentioned
it to either Harold or Glenda. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I
sure didn't want to mess up what he was doing by blurting something out. I'd
done enough of that in the past.
"Our second option is to just find a way out of the castle."
"Right," I said, "and sneak all the way through Donner and past the
posse."
"Posse?" Harold asked.
"Mounted riders who knew we were coming far outside of town."
"They picked me up as well," Glenda said.
"So they have some magik that tells them enemies are coming," Aahz
said. "We could be screened against that."
"If we knew what kind of magik it was," Tanda said.
"I'm stuck here anyway," Harold said. He pointed to what I had assumed
was the front door to the suite. "It's like walking into a wall trying to go
through there."
"And the same for how we came in?" Tanda asked.
"Oh, I can go all the way to the entrance into the ballroom through the
skull room," Harold said. "Then I hit the screen."
"How about through the floor, or the window?" I asked.
"Haven't tried either," he said.
"I doubt it would work," Aahz said.
"Yeah," Tanda said, "captive spells, which I think this sounds like,
are all-around prisons. It's like being in an invisible, unbreakable
bubble."
"So to get Harold out with us," I said, "we have to break that spell as
well."
"You're coming with us?" Glenda asked.
"I'm going to try," Harold said. He didn't add that there was gold for
getting him out, and none of the rest of us filled her in either.
"So, old mentor," I said to Aahz, "how do we go about breaking the
spells, since it seems to me that both our main ways of escape are blocked
by them?"
He looked at me with a harsh look, then answered my question. "A couple
of ways to break a spell. Either put a counter-spell on it, or cut off the
source of power to the spell."
"Since this place is flowing with energy, the second doesn't sound
likely. How does a counter-spell work?"
"I've tried every one I know," Harold said.
I glanced at Aahz. "My mentor hasn't even taught me any yet."
"When you gain enough self-control to use them," Aahz said, "I might
think about it."
"I tried a number of them the first day I was here," Glenda said.
"Didn't even dent the dimension-hopping shield."
"I tried all the ones I knew as well," Tanda said, frowning. Since we
were all still here, I assumed she had had the same result as Glenda.
"And I saw nothing in any of the books back there to give us any help
either," Aahz said. "In fact, I think it's worse than we are assuming. I
think the spell that keeps all the vampires as cows, and your people under
their spell and not killing the cows every month, is tied up with the very
spells we are trying to break."
"If that's the case," Harold said, sounding defeated, "to free me, I
must release all my people from the spell that has held them for centuries,
and free all the vampires to kill them at the same time. I can't do that."
"Actually," Aahz said, smiling, "there might be a way that it would
work, if we could shut everything down at once and at an exact time."
"How?" Harold asked.
"I wouldn't mind knowing the same thing," I said.
Tanda laughed with Aahz. "Do it during the middle of the day."
I frowned and looked at Aahz, who was nodding and laughing at me.
Harold was frowning as well.
Glenda was laughing, but not very much.
"All the cows are out in pastures," Aahz said, his voice taking on the
tone he got when I was being so stupid he couldn't believe I could be that
stupid.
"Daylight," Tanda said. "Vampires?"
"Oh," Harold said. "Of course. Sunlight kills vampires."
"Of course," I said out loud, pretending I had just forgotten, even
though I had never known that fact about vampires. Why would I have? Until I
came to this stupid dimension, I had never seen or even heard of a vampire.
I just figured they had something to do with full moons.
"So if we shut off the power to the big spell somehow," Harold said,
"all the vampires on one half of the planet would die."
"Exactly," Aahz said, "And the ones on the night side would have to
find shelter by sunrise, giving your people time to kill many of them."
"Aahz, I just have one question."
He looked at me and said nothing.
"How do you propose to shut off the energy flowing in this area?"
Aahz smiled. "That's our problem, isn't it?"
"Why do I think I'm not going to like what you're thinking at this
moment?"
"Oh, maybe because I'm thinking that's where you're going to come in."
Tanda laughed.
"It's not funny," I said.
"Sure it is," Tanda said.
I just stared at Aahz. Someday I'd love to figure out a way to get him
his powers back so I wasn't the one doing the dirty work all the time. I had
a hunch, from the look on his face, that this was going to get really dirty
for me. Center-of-the-mountain-kill-the-energy-at-its-source dirty.
"Before we can figure out how to block the energy for the spells," Aahz
said, "we have to know how it flows through the castle."
He said that and I just shuddered.
I could feel how much of the energy flowed in this place any time I
opened my mind to it. It came from down in the mountain, flowing up and out.
Usually energy for magik was in lines flowing through the sky that I had to
reach up and tap to work a disguise spell, or a flying spell. Or, if there
was no air energy, I went for ground energy flowing deep under the surface
and rocks. Air energy was easier to get, and Aahz had taught me to always go
for it first.
But this castle was built right on a place where energy flowed up from
below and out into the sky in all directions. Mapping meant someone who
could read energy lines had to somehow get above the castle and look down at
it all.
"So what do we do?" Tanda asked. "How do we start doing that?"
"First," Aahz said, "we try to figure out how the energy flows into
that skull room. It was strong and getting stronger in there right before
all the cows turned to vampires the other night."
"Really?" Harold asked.
I was surprised that Aahz had wanted to start there, but it made sense.
We had to map the energy patterns, and starting where we knew a lot was
being tapped seemed logical.
Suddenly I realized what I had been thinking about.
"Map," I said aloud.
Everyone sort of turned and stared at me.
"Map," I said again, smiling at them. I reached into my pouch and
pulled out the magik map we had used so often to get into this fix. If it
got us here, it just might be able to get us out.
"Oh, heavens, yes," Aahz said, smiling at me. "Great thinking, Skeeve."
That was the third time he had complimented me on something to do with
the map. I was going to have to keep this parchment with me at all times.
Aahz hadn't given me that many compliments in the last year.
I opened up the map. It was completely blank. Nothing on it at all. For
some reason, that wasn't what I was expecting. I'm not sure exactly what I
was expecting, but a blank parchment just flat wasn't it.
"Perfect," Aahz said, looking at the empty sheet.
I handed it to him, flashing it so the others could tell it was blank
as well. If he liked a map with no lines, he could have a map with no lines.
"Was that the map the cartographer did?" Harold asked. "The one that
got you here?"
"Sure was," I said.
"What happened to it?" Harold asked.
"It got us here," Tanda said.
"Oh," Harold said.
"Tanda," Aahz said, "do you know how to do a mapping spell?"
Tananda shook her head. "Beyond me, I'm afraid."
"Glenda?"
"Nope," she said. "When I needed a map I went to a cartographer's booth
on Deva and bought one."
"Same with me," Harold said.
pulled his one kitchen chair away from the small table and set it out, then
indicated that one of us should take it and another should take his
recliner. It was beyond clear that he never got guests of any kind-at least
the type of guests he wanted to sit down with. I think at that point we were
all so stunned by what he had said, we really weren't reacting well. I know
I wasn't. I have no real idea what I thought I was going to find when we got
to the "treasure," but a guy waiting to be rescued sure wasn't it. And a guy
who had used the map to bring his rescuers would have never occurred to me.
Only Glenda took his offer of the recliner and settled into it with a deep
sigh. The guy looked at her, worried.
"You were captured and taken last night, were you not?"
"I was," she said.
Harold looked sincerely upset. "I'm so sorry. You're so lucky you
survived it."
"We saw a room full of people who didn't," Aahz said.
The poor guy looked like he might just faint away right there. He was
wringing his hands, shaking his head, and pacing.
"It's all my fault, you know. All my fault."
"Okay," Aahz said, trying to calm the guy a little. "You want to
explain to us what's going on?"
"Actually start from the beginning," I said, leaning against the
kitchen counter.
From where I stood I could see out the two-story-tall windows that
flanked one side of the big room. The valley below was in complete shadow,
but the sun still covered the mountains and streamed in through the window
onto the grass. If this was a prison, it was the nicest jail cell I had seen
in a long time.
Harold nodded. "I'm sorry, I am just so shocked you are here, that the
map worked."
"The beginning," Aahz reminded him.
"Please?" Tanda said. "Right now you are looking at four of the most
confused people you have ever seen."
"Okay," Harold said, his head nodding like it was on a spring. He
glanced at the window and then took a deep breath. "I've only got a
half-hour until sunset and this is a long story. I might have to continue it
in the morning."
"No problem," Aahz said, clearly doing his green-scaled best to calm
the guy. "Just start and we'll go from there."
Again Harold did the nodding routine, his head going up and down so
hard I was sure he was going to have a neck ache. "First off, you're
standing in what centuries ago used to be called Count Bovine's Castle."
Okay, I have to say that I wasn't the one who started the snickering.
Tanda was, with her snort. Then Aahz started shaking his head, clearly
trying to contain himself, and I just couldn't keep the laugh inside
anymore. Thank heavens the guy was so lost in trying to tell us the story he
didn't notice.
"For as long as history recorded," Harold said, gathering speed on his
tale, "Bovine's type and our people lived in an uneasy balance. They fed off
of us; we killed them when we discovered them. Everything was in balance.
The legends go that Count Bovine, a very long-lived and smart vampire, found
this area and took it over. He enslaved the people of Donner and built this
castle."
Harold waved his arms in both directions to make sure, I guess, that we
knew he meant the castle we were sitting in.
"Then Count Bovine led his people in a revolt against my people, using
the power that came from this castle. Over a period of a hundred years he
swept out over everything and was on the verge of wiping my kind from the
face of this planet."
The guy glanced at the window. The sun was on the tops of the
mountains. Sunset was close.
Harold went on. "Of course, during that time Bovine's people also wiped
out almost all other living creatures here as well with their blood thirsty
ways. Day in and day out, they just couldn't get enough blood to satisfy
themselves."
It suddenly dawned on me, that except for horses, we hadn't seen any
other creatures since we had gotten here. No dogs or wild animals. Nothing
but cows, horses, and people.
"Okay, a quick question," I said. Harold nodded with a glance at the
window. "You're saying that Bovine's people were not cows at that point, but
were people like you, just vampires?"
"Yes," Harold said. "In fact, it is rumored that vampires originally
came from our species, but that fact is lost in time, if true."
"It's that way on other dimensions," Aahz said, "so it is more than
likely it was that way here as well."
Harold nodded. "I had heard that as well."
"So what happened?" I asked.
"Count Bovine, who was not a stupid individual, understood that
something had to be changed or his people would wipe out my people, who were
his people's only remaining food source."
"Makes sense," Tanda said. "You lose your food, you die as well."
"Exactly," Harold said. "So he struck a deal with the few remaining of
my people to take his people away for all but the nights of the full moon,
if my people would serve his kind during that time as food."
"And your people agreed?" Glenda asked, sounding as stunned as I was
feeling.
"I don't think my ancestors had a choice," Harold said. "Using the
magik of this area, Count Bovine put a spell on the rest of my people. Then,
using an even more powerful magik spell, he changed his people to cows."
"So while they were cows," Aahz asked, "why didn't your people just
kill them all? Seems like it would have been easy."
"It would have been," Harold said, "if not for the magik that keeps us
from doing just that, and keeps us from advancing. The magik allows us to do
nothing but prepare for the round-up. Month in and month out, for centuries
now, we have done nothing else." Harold just shook his head and went on.
"Bovine's people became contented cows, careful how they treated us during
the full-moon nights when they regained their normal form and had parties.
We became the feed animals, content to do nothing but prepare constantly to
serve our cow masters. It was survival for us, but not much of one."
Harold glanced once more out the window. The sun was just a minute from
leaving the top of the distant mountaintop. "Quickly, follow me," he said,
moving toward the bathroom area of his living quarters.
"What happens now?" Tanda asked.
"I become a cow for the night, the vampires roam the castle feeding and
killing like the history says happened, and if you don't hide in a magically
protected area, they will find you."
I was right behind him when Harold led us into his bathroom, opened a
cabinet on the wall, touched a place inside the cabinet, and stepped back as
a wall behind a toilet started moving inwards.
"This is the most magically protected room in all the castle," Harold
said. "Stay in there until I open the door. Under no circumstances come out.
Understand?"
"We understand," Aahz said.
I was the first one through the door, with Tanda and Glenda right
behind me. Aahz took a moment longer, talking about something with Harold
for a moment, then he joined us.
Behind the wall the space had been carved out of solid stone that was
streaked in gold. It was warm and lit by the golden glow of the gold from
the walls. The entire room was filled with old books, scrolls, desks,
chairs, and more antiques than I had ever seen in one place. We were all
inside when the guy slid the wall panel closed behind us without another
word.
"Not even a wave goodnight," Tanda said.
Glenda moved inside and right to an antique couch against one wall.
"If you don't mind," she said, lying down and closing her eyes. "I
think I need a nap."
"Good idea," Aahz said. Then he looked at me and held up a
gold-threaded rope that he had gotten somewhere. He put his finger to his
mouth to indicate that we should all be quiet. Then he moved over and took
an old blanket from another antique.
"I got a blanket here to cover you," Aahz said to Glenda. "Keep you
warm for the night."
"Thanks," Glenda murmured, clearly almost asleep.
Aahz moved over to her, motioning for Tanda and me to follow silently.
I had no idea what he wanted me to do. Aahz put the blanket over her,
wrapping the rope over her as well. Smooth move. She would never know it was
there.
He pointed that I should pull the end of the rope that had dropped down
against the wall under the couch.
I got on my knees and did just that, then gave the end to him as Aahz
pretended to tuck the blanket around her. With a quick knot he tied the rope
and stepped back.
Tanda and I both stepped back with him. I didn't know how one loop
would hold someone like Glenda, or why she even needed to be held. But
clearly Aahz had known something I hadn't, which was normal.
Glenda started thrashing, back and forth, back and forth, clearly
trying to get out of the bind, yet the golden rope never seemed to tighten
or strain in holding her. Then her eyes opened as if seeing a terror I sure
didn't want to see.
"What's happening?" I whispered.
Aahz motioned for me to be silent as Glenda's mouth opened into a
scream that never really came. Her back arched her up against the blanket
and rope, and she held that pose for a good thirty seconds.
It was the longest thirty seconds I had experienced. I couldn't take my
eyes off of her and the look of pure terror on her face. Then whatever she
was going through was over. She slumped back, closed her eyes, and began to
snore.
Aahz motioned that we should move away through the books and old papers
and scrolls.
"Okay, what just happened there?" Tanda asked a half-second before I
asked the same question.
"Harold gave me the rope to save her from becoming a vampire," Aahz
said. "It seems that those left alive last night were the ones they liked."
"So that was why Glenda's body wasn't in that morgue with the others,"
I said.
"Exactly," Aahz said. "They were trying to turn her, have her join
them."
I glanced back at where Glenda was snoring. "So she's not going to be a
vampire now?"
Aahz shrugged. "We'll keep the rope on her until morning just to make
sure."
"How about for two days?" Tananda asked.
Aahz laughed and said, "Maybe."
As far as I was concerned, we could keep the rope on her for the next
month. When it came to Glenda, my motto was better safe than sorry.
Spending the night trapped in the middle of a culture's entire history,
afraid that at any moment I might get taken and have my blood sucked, is an
experience I would not wish on my worst enemy. The room we were trapped in
was huge, with a high, domed ceiling and row after row of shelves full of
old books alternating with piles of ancient furniture. Unlike Aahz and
Tanda, I was not the scrounge-through-old-things kind of person. Old stuff
was dusty and usually boring, as far as I was concerned. I thumbed through a
few books and blew the dust off some old scrolls that looked like cookbooks.
I decided I didn't want to know what they were trying to tell me about how
to cook, so I wandered over to another aisle, found an antique couch tucked
off to one side of a pile of furniture, managed to get most of the dust off
of it, and lay down.
Tanda and Aahz were reading, whispering to each other about their
finds, clearly excited about what they were seeing. I was beyond being
excited about anything at this point. I was just tired. Yet for some strange
reason (namely vampire cows and fear of getting my blood drained and ending
up naked on a metal table in a morgue), I couldn't get to sleep. Instead I
lay there, finally turning onto my back and staring at the high ceiling.
Maybe an hour into the attempt at sleep, it finally dawned on me what I
was looking at every time I opened my eyes. On the smooth, stone ceiling
surface someone had painted something a long, long time ago. Now, in the
weird light from the glowing walls, and all the dust of the years, it was
faded and almost invisible. But it was still there.
And the more I lay on my back staring at it, the more I realized that
what I was seeing was the most important thing in the room as far as we were
concerned. It was a map of the entire castle, only it wasn't a map of the
current castle, but the layout of Count Bovine's castle.
The more I studied the drawing, the more I could see in the faint
outlines. I found Harold's living area, which at one point must have been
Bovine's royal suite.
The room we were now in was shown as a private library. And the skull
room was there as well, labeled as "royal storage." But what was really
interesting was the passageway that led from this room down into the
mountain, away from the Royal Suite, down to a point that seemed to show an
energy focal point of some sort in a large room. The energy point was drawn
on the very center of the dome, which I also found interesting.
After another hour I was sure I had the important areas of the map
pretty well memorized, including some escape routes from the castle I didn't
think any vampire cow would know about.
I stood and moved over to where Aahz and Tanda were sitting at desks
pouring over books. Glenda was still asleep on her couch, the golden rope
tied around her.
"Have a good nap?" Aahz asked.
"A productive one," I said.
He looked at me with his normal puzzled frown and then pointed at the
book he had open in front of him.
"Says here that this area around the castle is the magik focal area of
the entire dimension. Before Count Bovine took it over, it was a spa area
where demons from all the dimensions nearby came to soak up the concentrated
magik forces and become rejuvenated."
"Powerful stuff," I said.
"More than anything I've seen before," Aahz said.
Tanda pointed at what she had been reading. "This book says that the
war between the vampires and the normal folks lasted for over two hundred
years and killed almost everything. This was one of the last books put in
here before the exodus."
"Exodus?" I asked.
Aahz nodded. "It seems, from what we can gather, that when the
compromise was reached to save both sides, Count Bovine and his people left
this area, this castle, putting a shield up around it to keep everyone out
of the magik."
"It seems the count didn't trust his own people with this kind of
power," Tanda said.
"So what became of this count?" I asked.
Aahz shrugged. "Maybe Harold will tell us in the morning."
"Well, before that I've got something to show you."
I had them follow me back to my couch.
"I really don't feel like a nap," Aahz said.
"Just trust me," I said, pointing to a pile of furniture ten paces
away. "Pull that other couch over here."
He shook his head, but did as I suggested.
"Now both of you lie on that couch," I said, dropping onto the one I
had been on for hours earlier. "And lie on your backs."
Neither of them moved, and both looked annoyed. "What, can't trust me
for five seconds?" I asked, smiling up at them.
Aahz snorted and then lay down, scooting over enough to give Tanda a
little room as well.
I pointed upward. "What do you see?"
"A dark ceiling and a lot of dust," Tanda said.
"I see myself wasting my time," Aahz said. "There's a lot of
information here that we need to-"
Silence filled the old library. After a few long seconds I said,
"Interesting, isn't it?"
"What?" Tanda demanded. "Would you stop playing games and just tell me
what is going on?"
To me the map was now as clear as if it were printed on a white piece
of parchment. "It's a drawing," I said, pointing to the clearest lines to
Tanda's right.
"It's a map," Aahz said.
"Exactly," I said. "And if you study it long enough, you can see where
we are."
"Oh, my heavens," Tanda said to herself, now clearly seeing the drawing
of the castle.
"After a few minutes of looking at it, the lines become clearer," I
said. "Take a look to the right of the room we're in."
I didn't say anything else, giving them both time to study what I had
been looking at for hours. Then finally Aahz said, "It looks like there's a
corridor there."
"Where?" Tanda demanded.
"Off the room shown as a private library," I said. "On the opposite
side from the royal suite."
"And it leads downward," Aahz said.
"To this area's power," I said. "Do you have any idea what standing in
the middle of that kind of energy focal point would feel like?"
Both Tanda and Aahz looked at me.
"Like nothing you could ever imagine, apprentice," Aahz said.
"True," Tanda said, going back to staring at the drawings on the
ceiling, "but Skeeve might be the only one who can go down there."
"I know," Aahz said, also going back to studying the roof over his
head.
"Exactly what do you mean by that?" I asked, not liking the idea that I
might have to take that old corridor alone into the middle of the mountain.
Aahz sighed. "I've lost my powers; Tanda is an assassin, not a
magician, and we can't trust Glenda. You're it, apprentice. If one of us has
to go down there, it has to be you."
I stared at the roof, following the ancient corridor down into the
center of the mountain to a place of unimaginable power. For the moment, the
idea of getting my blood sucked by a vampire cow didn't seem so bad.
"Things are looking up."
MICHELANGELO
The rest of the night just crawled past. Aahz and Tanda stayed on the
couches with me for the longest time, studying the map and trying to figure
out how we were going to get out of here. I noticed that, once Aahz
discovered there was no golden cow, and that the map had been a sham to get
someone to save Harold, he became very interested in just leaving. I
supposed that was better late then never.
Aahz was sitting at one of the desks while Tanda and I stood beside him
when the wall opened up and Harold stepped in. Through the opening I could
see daylight flooding into the main area beyond the bathroom. It seemed we
had survived another full-moon night in the land of cow vampires.
Harold stepped in and glanced at where Glenda was still sleeping. She
hadn't moved at all during the night.
"Did she try to get away?" Harold asked.
"Only when the sun went down, and only for a few seconds," Aahz said.
"The rope held her."
"Then she's safe," Harold said.
"What did the rope do?" I asked, not really clear on the concept that a
simple rope like that could hold even a child, let alone a person who wanted
to be a vampire.
"Basically, the magik in the rope stopped her from changing," Harold
said. "And leaving it on her all night cleaned her system of any chance of
it ever happening. Check her neck if you want to make sure."
I moved over to Glenda. Drool had run out of her mouth and formed a wet
spot on the blanket. And she was snoring lightly. I put a finger on her
temple and eased her head over so I could see the vampire bite marks on her
neck. Where her skin had been red and inflamed, it had now returned to
normal. Only a few faint marks that looked more like freckles were left of
the infection.
"Amazing," I said.
Aahz had moved up behind me. "It sure is."
"Leave the rope on her for a while longer and let her sleep," Harold
said. "It will do her good, give her body time to replace the blood drained
from it."
I glanced at Glenda again. For a moment I almost felt sorry for her.
Almost. Then I remembered she had stranded me in this world with no thought
of ever coming back for me, and the feeling-sorry emotion left quickly.
"So how did you survive the night?" Tanda asked.
Harold just shrugged. "The same way I have survived every full-moon
night for more years than I want to think about. I turned into a cow, ate
grass, and slept standing up."
"Oh," Tanda said. "You going to explain that to us in the rest of your
story?"
Harold laughed. "It's a part of it." Then he looked around. "This is a
pretty amazing room, isn't it?"
"It is," Aahz said. "We learned some interesting history from some of
these books."
I noticed that Aahz didn't say anything about the ceiling map, and I
sure wasn't going to either. I wondered if Harold even knew about it.
"Good," Harold said. "That will give you some more background on what
happened with me, and how we got like this. Shall we go back out into the
sunlight?"
"What about her?" I asked, motioning toward the sleeping Glenda.
Harold shrugged. "She won't wake up as long as the rope is on her.
She'll be fine right there."
We followed him out into the main room. It felt great to see light
again. Spending the night in a dusty room worrying about what might happen
at any moment wasn't my ideal evening.
"Anyone like something to eat?" he asked, moving into the kitchen area.
We stood around the counter, watching him.
"Anything but carrot juice," Aahz said, smiling at me.
"Not funny," I said.
Harold looked at both of us and shrugged, clearly having no idea what
we were talking about. "I can make you a horse-steak sandwich, a cucumber
sandwich, or a salad with fresh tomatoes. And I've got either orange juice
or water to drink."
"Wow, you eat better than the rest of your people," Tanda said.
"I do?" he asked, surprised. "It's been so long since I've been out of
these rooms, I wouldn't know."
"A lot better," I said, "but at the moment I'd just like a glass of
water."
Aahz and Tanda agreed and as he got the water Aahz prompted him to
start his story again. "You got up to the point where your people and Count
Bovine's people had come to an agreement, his people were changed to cows
for most of the month, and this place was sealed off. What changed?"
"Actually," Harold said, "I changed it."
"Why?" Aahz asked, a fraction of a second before I could.
"Because I thought I knew better, knew what was best for my people,
knew how to change things back to a better world."
"Better back up and tell us how that kind of thinking got started,"
Tanda said.
Harold nodded. "I met a dimension traveler named Leila. I was running
this little restaurant and bar just down the road from here when Leila
walked in. We got talking, she told me about the big world outside of this
dimension, and then offered to let me be her apprentice. She said I had
great magical potential."
I glanced at Aahz, who ignored me. Not once had Aahz ever said I had
great magical potential, and I certainly wasn't going to ask him if I did.
He'd just say no and laugh. Mostly laugh.
"Leila took me dimension-hopping with her, showed me hundreds of
different places, taught me some basics of magik, then got killed by an
assassin."
I could tell from the look in Harold's eyes that even though that had
been some time ago, he still missed her. And might even have been in love
with her.
"So after she was killed I got a D-Hopper and came back here. The magik
block over this old castle was pretty basic, intended to just keep Count
Bovine and my people out. But I had been trained in some magik, so I got in,
knocking the block down.
"A little knowledge can be dangerous," Aahz said, glancing at me.
It was my turn to ignore him.
"It sure can be," Harold said. "I sat up house right here and found the
room you stayed in last night, and started learning about what had happened
to my people. And the more I read, the more convinced I became to try to
save my people and wipe out the vampires once and for all."
"In other words," Tanda said, "you started the war again."
Harold nodded at Tanda's blunt statement. "Basically, I did. Yes."
"So what went wrong?" Aahz asked.
"Count Bovine came back," Harold said.
"What?" I said. "How could he? He'd have to be thousands and thousands
of years old."
"He is," Harold said.
Aahz stared at me. "When are you going to get it through your head that
powerful vampires, like powerful magicians, live a very long time?"
"Okay, okay," I said. "Go on with your story."
"I actually didn't know that Count Bovine could be alive either,"
Harold said. "Since I was free from the magical spell that kept the cows
safe, I started gathering up help. One by one, I gathered a gang, broke the
spell over them, and started planning. When there were about fifty of us,
all trained and on horseback, we set about rounding up cows and killing
them."
No one said a word, so Harold went on. "As we went, on our army got
bigger and bigger, and more and more cows died. Every skull of every cow we
brought back here to make us stronger. It was a heady time."
Harold looked like an old man, thinking back to his party days.
"When did Count Bovine show up?"
"Oh, about four months into our little war. He and five of his most
powerful vampires walked in here one night and killed every one of my men
without so much as a fight."
"Bet you thought you had it shielded, didn't you?" Aahz said.
"I did," Harold said. "I was so confident of the shielding that I
didn't even have guards posted."
"Wouldn't have done any good," Aahz said. Tanda nodded. I didn't have a
clue why he said that, but Harold seemed to agree as well.
"Needless to say, Count Bovine was angry. He imprisoned me up here, and
put a spell on me so that every month, when he and his people are dining on
my people, I'm a cow eating grass."
"How long ago was that?" I asked.
"I don't know exactly," Harold said. "No real reason to keep track. At
least thirty years, maybe more."
"And Bovine and his people have been killing your people ever since?"
Aahz asked, looking puzzled.
"Actually, no," Harold said. "That just started a few years back, when
Count Bovine was killed and his second-in-command, Ubald, took over."
"Ubald's not one for keeping things in balance, is he?" Tanda asked.
"Not worried about it at all," Harold said. "He told me that there were
enough of my kind around for his people to party for centuries."
"At least he didn't undo the cow spell," I said.
"Neither he nor Count Bovine could," Harold said. "Ubald keeps trying,
though. He's using the cow skulls in the other room there to funnel energy
into breaking it."
"Makes sense," Aahz said. "A spell that major, in place for that long,
would be almost impossible to remove. But not completely impossible."
"He's got time," Harold said.
"So how did the map come about?" I asked.
"When Count Bovine was still alive, and had me locked up here, none of
them lived anywhere near here. One day, this cartographer showed up. I
wanted him to help me escape and he said he couldn't."
"He can't," Tanda said.
"Why?" I asked.
"He told me that, as long as he didn't involve himself in any activity
in any dimension," Harold said, "he was free to use his magik to move
anywhere he wanted, map anything he wanted, including through the magik that
Count Bovine had put up to hold me here in this castle."
"I'm puzzled," Aahz said, "How did you get him to lie that there was a
cow here who gave gold milk and draw a treasure map to it?"
"It never says anything about a cow giving gold milk," Harold said,
laughing. "I'm the cow the map leads to, and I was willing to give anyone a
lot of gold if they found me."
"Makes sense to me," Tanda said, laughing.
I was enjoying the different emotions playing over my mentor's face. We
had deciphered the map, found the cow, and were entitled to the gold. That
made Aahz's mouth water, I could tell. But, at the same time, getting the
gold out of here, with all our blood still inside our bodies, was going to
be another matter.
Harold noticed Aahz's face. "You're a Pervert, right?"
"Pervect," Aahz said, showing all his teeth.
He hated being called a Pervert, and often was, since that was the
reputation of the demons from his dimension.
"Sorry," Harold said. "But you love money and gold, don't you?"
Now it was Tanda's and my turn to laugh. Aahz just gave us both a dirty
look and then said, "Of course."
"You are welcome to all the treasure-gold if you want- you can carry
from here," Harold said. "There's tons of the stuff in the back. The rocks
of this mountain are full of it. All you have to do is help me escape."
I knew there wasn't a sunbeam's chance on Vortex #6 that Aahz would
turn down that offer. But I didn't really mind. I sort of liked Harold. And
besides, I'd lost a mentor once myself, and we apprentices needed to stick
together.
"You know of a way to escape from here?" Tanda asked Harold, staring at
how Aahz's eyes had glazed over at just the idea of a lot of gold.
"If I did, would I still be here?" he said, his voice sad.
Aahz looked at me and I shrugged. "Why not?"
Aahz looked at Tanda. Tanda sighed. "Sure. As you've been saying all
along, we've come this far."
"Great," Aahz said. "We'll help you."
I knew for a fact that Aahz didn't have a clue how we were going to
help Harold escape, but the promise sure cheered up our host.
After another hour of talking with Harold to make sure we hadn't missed
anything important, I knew enough about this Ubald vampire guy to make me
want another shot of carrot juice. The guy was just plain mean, almost as
old as Count Bovine had been, and not at all happy with the situation as it
stood.
On top of that, he liked to party, and party hard. By the time the sun
was ready to come up on the last morning of the full moon, Harold said,
Ubald and his group were stumbling idiots. Still very dangerous, but
stumbling, and it often took the men with the golden shovels days to round
up all the cattle from the different rooms of the castle and take them back
to their private pastures.
The idea of coming into a huge bedroom suite to find two cows standing
on a rumpled bed was too much for me. Tonight was that night, the most
dangerous night of the full moon according to Harold. I could hardly wait.
Finally Aahz decided we had talked enough and we all headed back into
the library area. Aahz wanted to have Harold show us the books about the
spells put over this castle, the spells put on everyone by Count Bovine, and
what Harold knew of the magik energy surrounding this castle.
But first we had to wake up Glenda. Snoring, drooling Glenda. As far as
I was concerned, she could just stay right there, sleeping for the next
hundred years, or until she died of hunger in her sleep, whichever came
first.
But it seemed that Harold and Aahz had other ideas for her which they
were not sharing with me.
"Are you confident she's cured?" I asked Harold as we stood staring at
her.
"Completely," Harold said. "The magik rope there does the trick."
"Well, just to be sure," I said, "can we put the rope around her again
tonight, before the sun sets?"
Aahz laughed. "Trust me, she'll have the rope on tonight. You can count
on it."
I stared at him as he moved to her and untied the knot in the golden
rope, then pulled it free, wrapping it in his hand.
After what Glenda had done to us, I figured it would have served her
right to become a cow for most of every month for the rest of her life. She
was already a self-centered bloodsucker; why shouldn't she have the entire
cow package?
After Aahz pulled the rope off of her, she awoke, groaned and somehow
managed to sit up, her face pale and her eyes glazed. "What happened?"
"You slept through the night just fine," Aahz said.
"Snoring like a horse," Tanda said.
I wanted to ask her how she knew horses snored, but figured this wasn't
the time to push too much into her personal life.
Glenda's hand went to her neck, where there was now no sign of the
vampire bites. I could tell that she was surprised when she touched her neck
and it didn't hurt. Surprised and confused. Then she noticed the gold laced
rope Aahz was holding. For a moment she looked into his eyes. Then she
asked, "Was I going to turn?"
"You were," Harold said. "It was why Ubald and his vampire friends let
you live."
"And the rope is what I think it is?" Glenda asked, not taking her eyes
from Aahz.
Aahz held it up. "Just to be safe, you're going to wear it tonight as
well. I promised my apprentice there for his peace of mind."
She stared at the rope for a moment, then nodded. "I suppose I should
thank you."
"Just help us all get out of here and we can call it even," Aahz said.
"I'll do what I can," she said, "but first, can I have a glass of
water?"
Harold laughed. "You are cured. I'll get it for you."
I had no idea why Harold thought that Glenda getting a glass of water
meant she was cured. Seemed like a somewhat silly sign to me. Or maybe
vampires were only thirsty for blood?
Harold headed out the panel toward his kitchen area. When he was safely
gone Glenda looked up at Aahz, the anger clear and at full force in her
eyes.
"Why didn't you just stake me when you had the chance?"
I was stunned by the question. And her anger at Aahz for not killing
her.
"I thought about it," Aahz said.
He pointed to a sharp stake on top of an antique dresser beside the
couch she was sitting on. I hadn't noticed it before. Again I was stunned.
Aahz went on.
"I figure you can be of help to all of us, something you haven't done
much of up to now."
"You know I'm going to have to wear that rope for the rest of my life,"
she said, "on every full moon, every time I hop dimensions, every night?"
"I know," Aahz said, his voice cold and low and sounding just about as
mean as I had ever heard him sound. "And if you don't help us, I'm going to
free you into the countryside here, in this dimension, without the rope.
You'll be a cow for most of the rest of your life."
I stared at him, seeing a side of my mentor I didn't often see. It
seemed that, as always, he had known more than he was telling me, and that
helping her had just been a ruse to keep her with us and under his control.
He tucked the rope into his pouch and crossed his arms.
"And if you want the rope to stay alive tonight, you're going to work
with us and not pull any of your tricks. Understand?"
Glenda glared at him, then slowly nodded. "I understand." Well, I
didn't, but I didn't want anyone trying to explain it to me with all the
anger flowing around at the moment.
"Go with the flow."
M. TWAIN
Sometimes in grand adventures, there are times when just nothing
happens. The rest of the third day of the full-moon cycle was one of those
times.
Aahz, Tanda, Harold, and Glenda spent the entire day poring over books
and old scrolls, trying to find answers on how to get out. I mostly sat and
listened, falling asleep every few minutes until my head bobbed enough to
wake me up enough to listen until I fell asleep again.
And over and over that pattern went. My neck was sore by the time the
day was over.
About thirty minutes before the sun set Aahz had Glenda lie down on a
couch, and then he tied the gold-laced magikal rope around her. She fell
asleep instantly. That rope was the best sleep aid I had ever seen. Aahz
should take it back with us to Possiltum to make money. On bad nights, I bet
the king would pay a ransom for it.
If it had been up to me, I'd have sent Glenda out into the hallway to
be a cow, eating grass and being followed around by a guy in a white hat
with a shovel. But it wasn't up to me, so Aahz put her to sleep.
About twenty minutes before the sun set Harold shut us into the library
again and went to his grass to become a cow for the night.
I slept off and on all night. Aahz and Tanda did as well, reading while
they were awake. By morning, when Harold opened the door and let in a few
wonderful rays of sunlight from the living area, I was well-rested and bored
to tears.
Aahz untied Glenda to wake her up, pouched the rope, and we all went
out into the kitchen area to have Harold cook us horse steaks covered in
tomatoes. He called it his celebration breakfast. He said he had it every
month after the last full moon night.
I had to admit, it was surprisingly good. After breakfast the talk
turned to escape, which, after the boring day and the fear of cow vampires
all night, was the most interesting topic I could imagine.
Aahz took charge of the discussion and ticked off our options. "First
chance we have is to lower the dimension-hopping screen. If we could do that
for even an instant, we'd be out of here."
"I've never run into a screen like it," Tanda said, "even in all my
years of being an assassin. It's more solid than a rock."
"More than likely coming from the energy in the mountain," Aahz said.
I thought about the map on the ceiling, and how Aahz hadn't mentioned
it to either Harold or Glenda. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I
sure didn't want to mess up what he was doing by blurting something out. I'd
done enough of that in the past.
"Our second option is to just find a way out of the castle."
"Right," I said, "and sneak all the way through Donner and past the
posse."
"Posse?" Harold asked.
"Mounted riders who knew we were coming far outside of town."
"They picked me up as well," Glenda said.
"So they have some magik that tells them enemies are coming," Aahz
said. "We could be screened against that."
"If we knew what kind of magik it was," Tanda said.
"I'm stuck here anyway," Harold said. He pointed to what I had assumed
was the front door to the suite. "It's like walking into a wall trying to go
through there."
"And the same for how we came in?" Tanda asked.
"Oh, I can go all the way to the entrance into the ballroom through the
skull room," Harold said. "Then I hit the screen."
"How about through the floor, or the window?" I asked.
"Haven't tried either," he said.
"I doubt it would work," Aahz said.
"Yeah," Tanda said, "captive spells, which I think this sounds like,
are all-around prisons. It's like being in an invisible, unbreakable
bubble."
"So to get Harold out with us," I said, "we have to break that spell as
well."
"You're coming with us?" Glenda asked.
"I'm going to try," Harold said. He didn't add that there was gold for
getting him out, and none of the rest of us filled her in either.
"So, old mentor," I said to Aahz, "how do we go about breaking the
spells, since it seems to me that both our main ways of escape are blocked
by them?"
He looked at me with a harsh look, then answered my question. "A couple
of ways to break a spell. Either put a counter-spell on it, or cut off the
source of power to the spell."
"Since this place is flowing with energy, the second doesn't sound
likely. How does a counter-spell work?"
"I've tried every one I know," Harold said.
I glanced at Aahz. "My mentor hasn't even taught me any yet."
"When you gain enough self-control to use them," Aahz said, "I might
think about it."
"I tried a number of them the first day I was here," Glenda said.
"Didn't even dent the dimension-hopping shield."
"I tried all the ones I knew as well," Tanda said, frowning. Since we
were all still here, I assumed she had had the same result as Glenda.
"And I saw nothing in any of the books back there to give us any help
either," Aahz said. "In fact, I think it's worse than we are assuming. I
think the spell that keeps all the vampires as cows, and your people under
their spell and not killing the cows every month, is tied up with the very
spells we are trying to break."
"If that's the case," Harold said, sounding defeated, "to free me, I
must release all my people from the spell that has held them for centuries,
and free all the vampires to kill them at the same time. I can't do that."
"Actually," Aahz said, smiling, "there might be a way that it would
work, if we could shut everything down at once and at an exact time."
"How?" Harold asked.
"I wouldn't mind knowing the same thing," I said.
Tanda laughed with Aahz. "Do it during the middle of the day."
I frowned and looked at Aahz, who was nodding and laughing at me.
Harold was frowning as well.
Glenda was laughing, but not very much.
"All the cows are out in pastures," Aahz said, his voice taking on the
tone he got when I was being so stupid he couldn't believe I could be that
stupid.
"Daylight," Tanda said. "Vampires?"
"Oh," Harold said. "Of course. Sunlight kills vampires."
"Of course," I said out loud, pretending I had just forgotten, even
though I had never known that fact about vampires. Why would I have? Until I
came to this stupid dimension, I had never seen or even heard of a vampire.
I just figured they had something to do with full moons.
"So if we shut off the power to the big spell somehow," Harold said,
"all the vampires on one half of the planet would die."
"Exactly," Aahz said, "And the ones on the night side would have to
find shelter by sunrise, giving your people time to kill many of them."
"Aahz, I just have one question."
He looked at me and said nothing.
"How do you propose to shut off the energy flowing in this area?"
Aahz smiled. "That's our problem, isn't it?"
"Why do I think I'm not going to like what you're thinking at this
moment?"
"Oh, maybe because I'm thinking that's where you're going to come in."
Tanda laughed.
"It's not funny," I said.
"Sure it is," Tanda said.
I just stared at Aahz. Someday I'd love to figure out a way to get him
his powers back so I wasn't the one doing the dirty work all the time. I had
a hunch, from the look on his face, that this was going to get really dirty
for me. Center-of-the-mountain-kill-the-energy-at-its-source dirty.
"Before we can figure out how to block the energy for the spells," Aahz
said, "we have to know how it flows through the castle."
He said that and I just shuddered.
I could feel how much of the energy flowed in this place any time I
opened my mind to it. It came from down in the mountain, flowing up and out.
Usually energy for magik was in lines flowing through the sky that I had to
reach up and tap to work a disguise spell, or a flying spell. Or, if there
was no air energy, I went for ground energy flowing deep under the surface
and rocks. Air energy was easier to get, and Aahz had taught me to always go
for it first.
But this castle was built right on a place where energy flowed up from
below and out into the sky in all directions. Mapping meant someone who
could read energy lines had to somehow get above the castle and look down at
it all.
"So what do we do?" Tanda asked. "How do we start doing that?"
"First," Aahz said, "we try to figure out how the energy flows into
that skull room. It was strong and getting stronger in there right before
all the cows turned to vampires the other night."
"Really?" Harold asked.
I was surprised that Aahz had wanted to start there, but it made sense.
We had to map the energy patterns, and starting where we knew a lot was
being tapped seemed logical.
Suddenly I realized what I had been thinking about.
"Map," I said aloud.
Everyone sort of turned and stared at me.
"Map," I said again, smiling at them. I reached into my pouch and
pulled out the magik map we had used so often to get into this fix. If it
got us here, it just might be able to get us out.
"Oh, heavens, yes," Aahz said, smiling at me. "Great thinking, Skeeve."
That was the third time he had complimented me on something to do with
the map. I was going to have to keep this parchment with me at all times.
Aahz hadn't given me that many compliments in the last year.
I opened up the map. It was completely blank. Nothing on it at all. For
some reason, that wasn't what I was expecting. I'm not sure exactly what I
was expecting, but a blank parchment just flat wasn't it.
"Perfect," Aahz said, looking at the empty sheet.
I handed it to him, flashing it so the others could tell it was blank
as well. If he liked a map with no lines, he could have a map with no lines.
"Was that the map the cartographer did?" Harold asked. "The one that
got you here?"
"Sure was," I said.
"What happened to it?" Harold asked.
"It got us here," Tanda said.
"Oh," Harold said.
"Tanda," Aahz said, "do you know how to do a mapping spell?"
Tananda shook her head. "Beyond me, I'm afraid."
"Glenda?"
"Nope," she said. "When I needed a map I went to a cartographer's booth
on Deva and bought one."
"Same with me," Harold said.